The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  —She gagged again, her eyes watering, trying so hard not to bite him as he worked the back of her throat over and over again, Sander saying something, Jan saying something back, and then she was sick all over him, trying to stop herself and trying to give in all at once. His fingers were out and he let her squirm away from him. She was crying then, not for relief that he was alive, that they were alive, but crying at her own folly, mooning over the first man who seemed to take an interest. The only interest he’d ever had was in his stupid ring, the ring she had taken from a dead man’s hand. Christ’s crown, she’d taken it off a putrid finger and gobbled it up like a sloe berry, and the thought made her gag again, but nothing more came up.

  “Ha!” Jan cried. “Ha!”

  Wiping a cold, wet wrist over her eyes, she saw Jan hold up the small band. Threads of clear nastiness dangled from it, but he seemed not to notice, trying it first on one finger and then on another until settling on the middle digit of his left hand. The gold sparkled, and she realized the sun must be shining somewhere out there beyond the mist, marveling that it was not midnight, not black as the deep up here. It had seemed an eternity since they arrived, since she had first dived down, but looking at the puddle of puke forming a moat around Jan’s knees, she saw that the dinner they’d shared on this same crypt had hardly begun to break down.

  Jan rose, webs of vomit and gore strung through the patch of hair on his belly, trousers soaked through with blood and bile, and Jo looked away from him, ashamed of herself. Sander stood with his back to her at the edge of the crypt, and she heard Jan drop down into the boat. Andrei was nowhere to be seen, and she realized who had flopped down into the water between her and the fish. That poor, wonderful Muscovite, sacrificing himself to save a girl he didn’t even really know, while Jan and Sander sat back and watched him do it…

  She shuddered, suddenly very cold, suddenly missing the purple pots, her shitbird brothers, the clumsy attentions of the fisherboys whose deceptions were plain as their attempts to look older by growing weak little sand-beards. Sander’s shoulders tightened, as though wincing from her gaze, and he turned to her. Their eyes met, and she saw a strange sorrow in them, a misery she never would have thought him capable of, and a tight fear pierced her heart. No, not that, he wouldn’t—

  “Jo,” said Jan, the boat creaking, but still she wouldn’t turn to him. She focused on finding any shred of strength that she hadn’t left in the water, sitting up and wiping the spew off her bare chest. She was more aware of her nakedness than she’d ever been, and just wanted to get to her wadded shift and gown that still lay near at hand, the fabric soaked through with meer drippings; she just wanted to put it on and cover herself and be somewhere warm, and she would never tell, she would never speak a word of what she had seen here, what she had heard, what she had done.

  No. She was just tired, was all, she was tired and had worked herself into a frenzy, what with that great big fucking fish, and then Andrei dying to save her, and now that it was over she wasn’t thinking clear. It was like when she had near-drowned the night she’d met Jan, and had to haul herself to her feet and trudge home in the dark, her hand bleeding out, too intent on getting home to think of what she’d do when she got there, where she’d plant that knife of his she held in her quivering hand. Get up, she thought, trying to will her sore frame into motion, just get up and get dressed and everything will be better, everything will—

  —Hurt exploded in her left cheek like a knot popping in a fire, and then the right side of her face blasted away that pain with an even harder blow, her whole head engulfed in fire. She tried to jerk away from it, from the too-hard crypt she had collapsed against, facefirst, but as she did, everything swam, and the world tilted, and she found herself sinking beneath a shimmering wave.

  Her head was lifted, tender fingers on her neck, but the pain this brought pushed her deeper into the water, down into the muck at the bottom, and she wondered if she had ever found the ring, if she had ever seen that macabre, impossible sight at the sunken dining table, or if she were drowning in the blackness, dreams taking her as the world left her. Then she heard his voice, drifting down, and she kicked up, floating higher and higher. She blinked away the tears, trying to see, trying to breathe, beholding Jan reaching down through the sheen to save her, to lift her out of the water, but something had pinned her just under the surface, crushing down her arms, her chest, her throat.

  No. No, no, no. Jan was sitting atop her chest with his knees on her arms, and he had coiled a cord around her neck, perhaps the rope she had used to plot the black hallway of the flooded manor. It tugged her in opposite directions, the cord, a pinching heat on either side of her throat as he pulled harder, and she realized the pain in her chest wasn’t just from his tailbone crushing her tits.

  She was drowning up here, and too late she fought him, fought him as fierce as she could, but she was trapped, and there was no voice to speak with, to threaten or beg. He had taken even that, and as his arms spread farther, snow began to fall around them, ever-widening flakes rising up from the mist. Sander was standing over her, his voice a garble, brilliant white powder erasing his features, and then Jan’s, and then, finally, her own. The light took her, as it takes all who seek it.

  VII.

  Why?!” Sander was shouting in Jan’s face. “Why’s she got to, why?!”

  “Because you had to make sure she knew what we were doing,” said Jan, relaxing the rope from around the girl’s neck. Her skin was raw beneath it, and he pulled the cord loose with his finger. She managed a wheezing gasp, but her eyes remained blank and dull, staring at whatever it was people saw when they were down that far. “Because you—”

  “Fucking liar,” said Sander, his hands opening and closing in nervous clenches as he stalked back and forth, the narrowness of the crypt reducing his histrionic posturing to a quick step one way and then a quick step back the other. “In Dordt you said, you said you’d do it, and she didn’t know then, you were always going to—”

  “But I might have changed my mind,” said Jan, never taking his attention off the girl. She looked dead already, but he could hear the life returning to her in reedy breaths and he didn’t want to be distracted if she woke up. “You’ve ensured I can’t, not now. She knows who I am and what we’re doing. So she dies. You had a point before, about her not knowing any better, so maybe we could have just turned her loose somewhere. Not now.”

  “She’s a fucking kid! Just, just let her go, leave her out here, nobody will come and—”

  “That would be crueler,” said Jan. “Much. And who knows, maybe she’d swim all the way back to Holland, and then what? What in God’s name had gotten into you, Sander? When did you turn into such a bitch?”

  “Just do it, then!” It was more of a scream than a shout. Did she remind him of someone? A sister he’d never mentioned? A daughter? No, Sander was gay as a goose, and a sister seemed unlikely—maybe she looked like a boy he’d known, what with her short hair and blunt features. Then Sander’s voice dropped, became the deadly serious hiss he adopted when They were playing into his fears, the nameless, faceless conspiracy that was always plucking away at the hem of his reason. “Why aren’t you doing it, why the fuck are you playing with her if—”

  “Get back in the goddamn boat,” said Jan quietly, finally looking up from the girl and retightening the rope as he did. She didn’t wake up, but her body began to shudder as he cut off her air again. “I didn’t want her shitting herself while we were talking, is the reason, but we are done fucking talking about this.”

  “Fine,” said Sander raising his palms and backing away. He almost toppled backward into the water before catching himself. Jan smiled at this, turning back to the girl. Her face was going as purple as the hands jutting out from under his knees, blankly slapping the stone as she died. Of all the complications, he never would have predicted Sander going soft. A fortnight from now they would be lying together in a comfortable bed and the big bitch would roll over
and mutter an apology to the wall—for all his hardness, Sander was never able to look Jan in the eye when he said he was sorry—but in the meantime, let him sulk.

  The boat rocked in the water behind Jan as the madman fled as far as he was able. Jan’s eyes shifted from the girl to the ring she had found him, the gold band encircling his finger just as it was always destined to, just as the cord was always destined to encircle Jolanda’s throat. It was a kinder end than the miserable life of a dye-maker’s daughter, and in their merry time together he had shown her more happiness than she had ever known, would ever have known. It was a kindness, and he eagerly gave it to her, Graaf Tieselen of Oudeland pulling the rope tight as the spark went out of her blind, distended eyes.

  VIII.

  Jolanda stood on the beach, sand slicing between her toes, and peered into the maelstrom. It was all around her, the snow gone and replaced with swirling thunderheads, and she wondered how she knew it was a beach, for it was black, black as anything she had ever seen, with no star nor moon nor scrap of coal beneath the purple pots to shine in that night, in that gale, and the wind howled and the rain whipped, cutting her cheeks with its edge. Her head felt like a sloshing, boiling kettle of dye, splashing out onto the sand, scalding her neck and tits, and she realized she was going to be sick, that she was going to puke, but not from her mouth, not from her stomach, but from her very skull, and she felt a sudden and deep fear fill her. Not for the storm around her, nor the tempest within her, but for something else—the realization that she was not on a beach, not in a maelstrom, not anywhere but inside herself, in a churning, sickening dream she could not break. The rain came harder then, warm drops splashing her cheeks, her brow and lips, and the heat of it terrified her—she had always hated the summer, and here it came upon her, drizzling down its warmth when all should be cool and dry and quiet, and the screaming wind lifted her off the ground, off the slab, and she knew she was dead. She’d always hoped she would see her brother Pieter again when her life ran out, but instead she saw only the dark.

  IX.

  Jan never did anything right, never did as he ought, never, ever, ever. He was supposed to turn, was supposed to see and stop what he was doing and say he was sorry. Of course he didn’t do that, but even then he was supposed to be quiet about it, to go silent and drop his arms and look mutely down at the tip of steel jutting out of his belly, a red drop suspended on its edge as a thin, dark creek began to ooze out around Glory’s End. Jan was supposed to silently look at Sander, the rope falling from his fingers, and accept what had happened. Apologize, maybe.

  Instead Jan freaked the fuck out before the sword had even passed through him, slithering forward and trying to escape the crypt, to wriggle into the water like a landed eel. His bare back was spurting blood as he fled and Sander stuck him again, trying to go deeper, harder, right through his heart, but Jan danced on the blade, bone scraping metal as he shrieked and shrieked, the noise so undignified, so unquiet, so utterly… un-Jan, that Sander stopped trying to stab him and set to slashing at the back of his neck with the sword, her thirsty edge winking between them as she fell again and again.

  Jan managed to get turned halfway around, his eyes meeting Sander’s as he babbled and thrashed, and in that moment Sander froze, realizing what he was doing, what the fucking fucking fuck he was doing. Without warning he was murdering his dear Jan, was what, but while he hesitated she did not, Glory’s End diving down and through and deep, deep, deep, the hard man not so fucking hard as he thought.

  That, then, must be the heart, Sander realized as Jan’s face set and his eyes rolled back and his thrashing gave way to a weak shivering, the sword spearing him the way she had speared so many others, and she twisted in Sander’s hand, widening her hole and bringing forth more of the frothy blood.

  Jan was not begging. Jan was not moving. Jan was not even breathing. Jan was fucking dead.

  This was enough, and not letting any more thoughts come into him, Sander went to the girl and dug his shaking, bloody fingers under the cord around her neck. It slid up with a noise like it was coming off a dry bollard. It had dug in so deep there was blood, or was that his? No, Jan’s. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe.

  Sander knelt down farther and gave her a rabbit-punch to the bare stomach, and as if she were a dead spider, she drew her limbs inward at that, arms and legs coming together as she rolled onto her side, gasping so loudly it caused Sander to jump. He pulled the cord the rest of the way off her and turned away, as if embarrassed by her nudity. She might have pissed herself, but that could have been Jan, who knew?

  Fucking stupid, was what it was. No, fucking mad. Why hadn’t Sander asked, why hadn’t he begged, why hadn’t he threatened? Oi, neuker, I’m not asking you, let the skinny little slut go, or I’ll fucking kill you. Why hadn’t he said that? So he wouldn’t have to say it? So he wouldn’t have to stare blankly at his lover without any reason for it, other than he was a soft fucking cuntbitch himself, now that the Karnöffel cards were down?

  No, he had done it because Jan was working with them, was—no, no, no, there weren’t no fucking them, there wasn’t nobody but him and Jan and this wee girl, and here they were. Sander had never really thought of himself as a murderer before, even after what had happened with his father, but the word came to mind now, yes it truly did. He looked at Jan and a rush of remorse and grief and fear and confusion flooded him, washing away all his thoughts and rationalizations, and he went to his man and lay down beside him and cradled him in his arms and wept and howled and whispered apologies to the sodden, mangled corpse.

  The girl’s breath had caught several times, turning to wet coughing, and now she began to groan. Fearful she would find him, Sander was on his feet so fast he almost slipped in the blood and went over the side of the crypt, but he caught himself, and wrenched Glory’s End from Jan. The sword seemed reluctant to leave the scabbard she had made for herself in the man, and when she came loose, the sensation brought bile and booze up Sander’s throat. He pushed the sickness back down, but only just. The girl was crying now, he could hear, but she’d brought her arms up to shield herself from the sight of him, and he could not see her face.

  Quickly, then, right to the throat. It would mean going through her purple arms, but they were skinny things, and Jan had lined her neck for him with the ropeburn, like the first notch hewed from a log in need of splitting. Sander raised Glory’s End, wondering just what the fuck he was doing. When in doubt…

  “No!” he cried, and pivoting around, he hurled the sword high into the air, a steel windmill turning through the sky. The dead tree near the church spire was just there, ready to catch her in its trunk as she began to arc back down. Her point would skewer the wood all the way to the hilt, and there she would wait until he returned. Or, perhaps, he would grow old and withered and never again be fit to wield her, and the tree would keep her until some worthy man came a-questing for the legendary weapon and found her sleeping there amongst the birds’ nests and eel dens.

  He turned and was running then, running, but only for two steps, for the crypt promptly fell away. He leapt from the edge of the slab, up into the air like Glory’s End, and with his back turned he did not see the sword splash into the meer far short of the dead tree. The flat of mud and rushes where they had first beached the boat was beneath Sander, but he would never reach it, he realized; his fall would last longer than his life, the price for his sin an eternity plunging down into darkness, into filth, with the bottom never reached, for he—

  —Splashed into the mud with a rather unimpressive plop, twisting his ankle in the process. He sank near to his waist but wriggled deeper into the islet, intent on burying himself alive in the muck, but by the time he was up to his tits in the stuff, a different thought had caught his attention, and he sat in the mire contemplating his lot. It seemed very likely that if Jan thought the slut was a, what’s it, a liability, he might have thought the same about Sander. Jan had given Sander a lot of reasons to doubt this,
granted, but then the little bitch had seemed rather surprised by the turn of things as well. A man willing to do such a thing to a child might not shirk from doing similar to a lover, would he?

  Maybe Jan had all sorts of his own black thoughts going on, and maybe Glory’s End had directed Sander to save the bitch in order to save himself. Jo, he thought, squirming in the suddenly uncomfortable mud, he had saved Jo at the cost of Jan because she wasn’t a bitch, a slut, an idiot, a whore; she was Jo. That was why. Jo. But there had to be something more, there had to be. Right? He had saved her for a reason. Now he just had to find out what it was.

  X.

  The only thing that hurt worse than Jolanda’s pounding head was her throat. It felt like the shellfish hammers whaling away at the inside of her skull had splintered off bone shards that had fallen down her craw, jamming it full of sharp slivers, and even breathing made her eyes water from the pain of it. Her shift, she thought. Even more than a sip of water to wash down some of the hurt or the absence of the bloody body lying just there beside her, she wanted her shift. A strange truth, but then they often were. She squirmed over the damp, sticky crypt to the wad of soaked linen and pulled at it, untangling the clump of wet cloth from the bulkier gown. Evening was finally beginning to settle over the grave of Oudeland, and she was alone on the crypt with the body of…

  She went to him, still not quite believing he could be… But no. He lay on his side, and she reached out her fingers to brush a deep gash that stretched from just behind his ear all the way across his shoulder, black lumps of bone glistening in the wound. He was already cooling, and he stank like something spoiled. She had the sudden thought to kiss him, but his eyes were like those of the fish she’d sometimes find before the gulls did on the strand, and the thought of touching her lips to his with those rolled-back eyes staring through her brought on a shudder of repulsion. There was so much blood she could scarce believe it.